Sidan 8: Even today, most people I come into contact with regard me as something strange and threatening despite the fact that I`ve got a university degree under my belt and do research for that august body, the Economic and Social research group. People just can´t understand why it is that I ride av bike and live the way I do. I get turned away from pubs and find it hard to get rented accomidation. I get stopped and searched by the police with monotonous regularity. And I still have difficulty in convincing people that I`m not about to punch them up in the air or steal their money… I`m not so sure. One thing I do know is that if I ever had to make a choise between changing the way that I go about things in order to gain social acceptance – thus living a lie, remaining an outsider – and being true to myself, then there reallyy wouldn´t be any contest att all. Anyway, it`s fun making life hard för yourself, ain´t it?

Om Hojkörning

Sidan 9: The very act of riding a bike is itself an exciting and potentially dangerous experience… the biker exposes himself to the hazards of the road. Out there on the highway, winding it on, he is truly the master of his own destiny, a free-willed individual engaged in a relentless quest for the spirit of life. Like his cultural predecessor, the American Indian, he may go down, but he`ll most certainly go down fighting!

Om polisförföljelser

Sidan 8: I get stopped and searched by the police with monotonous regularity.

Sidan 15: Their method was systematic harassment of the outlaw bikers from the mass of law-abiding motorcyclists and the subsequent emergence of a new “American folk hero” or folk devil (depending on your point of view or, more particuarly, your social situation).

Om 1-% patchen

Sidan 19-20. A conference was held in San Francisco 1960 between Hells Angels statewide leadership… and the leadership of clubs like Gypsy Jokers, Road Rats, Galloping Gooses, Satan´s Slaves, a North Beach club called The Presidents and Mofos. We gotta stop fighting ourselves and start fighting the cops… We voted to ally under a”a 1 percenter patch. As a supplement to regular colours, it would identify the wearer as a righteous outlaw. The patch also could help avoid counterproductive in-fighting because an Angel , Mofo or any 1 percenter would be banded against a common enemy. Everyone knew the patch was a deliberately provocative gesture, but we wanted to draw deep lines between ourselves and the pretenders and weekenders who only played with motorcycles.

Om rockers

Sidan 110: In England the pivotal skills was not brutality or dancing, but simply fast and dangerous riding…every London hospital was crowded to overflowing with motorcycle casualties… In the tangled mass of the road systems, the jungle of glittering signs , the endless hypnotic cat´s eyes, the monotonous lanes of traffic, the desolate…
cafeterias, the rockers were a strange and heartening breath of wildness and preserved integrity. They would come roaring down to London at the weekend in tribes, studs glittering, tangled greasy hair flying out behind them.

Sidan 123: Black leather, greasy DA haircuts and rock´n roll were far from dead and were still considered to be the style of the rebellious biker throughout most of the land.

Skiftet från rocker till biker

Sidan 9: 1968 was the year when the biker subculture, in common with every other subcultural movement in Western Society, underwent a whole host of quite radical and lasting changes.

Sidan 122: In Britain, as well as in America 1968 represented a turning point for the biker scene in more ways than one…Almost parasitically the embryonic bike scene of the late 1960s grew to maturity within the hippie subculture, sharing its drugs, it´s music´, it´s festivals it´s squats and it´s women.

Sidan 116: Suddenly you no longer had to be interested in bikes to be a biker – it was the experience, not the nuts and bolts…Rebels, after all, didn´t need a cause. The bike became a kind of drug. Like acid, it assaulted the senses of user, wrenching him both bodily and mentally from his earthbound existence. As with acid, it was the trip that counted, not the destination…Outlaws? They were outlaws by choice, from the word go.

Sidan 119: Born to be wild became the international anthem of a new generation of bikers. It was released int 1969 of the film Easy Rider, which more than any other single event, projected the biker image.

Sidan 122: British bikers formed themselves into loosekrit clubs, emualating their american precursors as best they could by sewing oulaw patches on to their sleeveless denims and drawing up codes of conduct. Things began to change rapidly. Old time rockers were growing their hair, wearing beads and eagerly exploring the mindbending properties of psycedelic drugs. At the same time they enjoyed the freedom symbolized by a speeding motorcycle. Bikers had at last found their place in the revolution, their own model of action.

Sidan 123: What was needed was a new identity which the bike rider could adopt, an identity which fitted the new way of looking at the world. As, in the States it was the release of Easy Rider in the autumn of 1969 that provided that identity and banished the coffebar cowboy into the dark ages för ever… But not for one single moment did we realize just what a significant and lasting impact it would have on the brittish bike scene. It hit us like a bolt between the eyes… The release of Easy Rider transformed our idea, virtually overnight of what was and what was not meant by the term biker lifestyle.

Sidan 123 ff: Just to watch the pair of them gunning their Harley across the screen with the wind in the hair, was poetry itslef. Incredible music, incredible scenery – thes were more than enough to impress me beyond words… Easy Rider was for us a truly messianic film that quite litterately triggerd off a thousand ideas in our eager… It was like drifting off into another world, a world which we desperately wished to experience for ourselves…

Sidan 123 ff: Dennis Hopper managed to encapsulate brilliantly the very spirit of freedom that we all had felt, at one time or another, out there on the road. He presented on the screen a ceremonial vindication of what we´d known all along but were unable to articulate. Even the numbing schock of the ending, the pointless death, was itself strangely beautiful. It said it all. There could have been no way more fitting, no other way that could have hammered home the message more effectively. Outlaws no longer had to be swaggering, macho bullies to offer a challenge to the world. All they had to do was place themselves beyond the comphrehension of ordinary people in order to qualify for summary extermination. They might be dead and gone, but the challenge had been made, and we were more than ready to take it up. We didn´t talk very much as we made our way home… We didn´t need to. We understood!

Sidan 124: Easy Rider gripped our world by the neck and shook it around. Nothing was ever the same again. It provided a clarity of image, a style which had hitherto been lacking and it bannished everything that had gone before into total obscurity.

Even riding styles altered to conform with the new image. Doing the ton down the bypass, chin on the petrol tank, arse in the air, suddenly lost all it´s appeal. Now we rode our bikes along the high street, feet up and laid back inviting the citizens to turn their heads and comment as we passed by.

Bikes became known as choppers, hogs or simply wheels. Birds becaomes chicks or old ladies… It was our very own revolution. The new bike scene was still alive and kicking, only now it wore a new set of clothes, spoke a new language and found new ways to outrage the public.

Ian Richard “Maz” Harris manifest

True outlaw bikers aren´t the wild-eyed kids that the press is so fond of quoting. We may not be the most wellmannered or presentable people in the world, but we are probably the most honest. We have nothing to hide. We doesn´t hand out bullshit and we don´t take bullshit. Our way of life isn´t to everybody´s taste but neither is there to ours. Governments do their best to control us, to make us conform to their pattern of cicilized behaviour. In the United States federal rackettering laws are abused to imprison our leaders. In West germany our clubs are banned. In Canada Project Focys records our every moment. We get pilloried by the press, which prints lies about us, and by the police, who get out of their way to stop and hassle us. We are made to wear helmets to protect ourselves against lunatic car drivers. We get no support from concerned MPs or civil rights organisations. But I guess we wouldn´t have it any other way. We have our own voice, we fight our own battles, we choose our own friends and we look after ourselves. We are the bikernation, and while we live and breathe we will protect our heritage. In the words of Hells Angel Sonny Barger: “It´s something we believe in. I know they can lock me up, and I know they can beat me up and I know they can kill me, but they´re not going to change my mind. They´re assholes and I know it. They´re mad because I know it”. Ride on brother!

Paybacks Slutord – visa folk frihet och de blir halvt ihälskrämda!

Vi vill avsluta genomgången av Maz Harris bok omkring födelsen av den moderna bikern med ett mycket talande avsnitt från sidan 120: In process of exploring the American myth of freedom on the road, the two bikers discover that it´s just that – a myth. Gerorge, their new friend, is touched too, by the quest for his elusive freedom but is… cowardly murderd by mindless conformists, inflicted with the very same disease that killed the American myths of liberty and individuality – paranoia that steems from a fear of freedom… As George himself puts it: This used to be a helluva country, There´s a lot of talk about freedom and the individual, but no freedom. Show, the people a little individualism and they´re terrified.

On July 26th 1949, to Jack and Betty Harris, an eminent biker was born. A bouncing bundle of joy given the name Ian Richard Harris, who would later be known to us all as ‘Maz’.

Maz would have us believe, and believe we do, that his love of motorcycles had stretched four decades. From the early age of two and half he remembered sitting on his Uncle’s 650cc BSA with his young imagination running wild. It was not until just before his sixteenth birthday however, that he bought his first bike, a 500cc Ariel, for the princely sum £7. It wasn’t new, but to Maz it was his first real taste of something great and rewarding.

A lifestyle undoubtedly within him from the beginning. Interestingly, the year of this purchase was 1965, a year that would see many a rampage, particularly on the beaches, by the infamous ‘Mods & Rockers’. This of course instilled a great fear of motorized two-wheeled vehicles into even the most liberal of parents. Amusingly, Maz’s Dad had said to him exactly the same thing as my parents had said to me, and no doubt many of you encountered the same, which was of course that age-old piece of advice, “Why don’t you wait another year and buy a car instead?”. That’s not the only thing we had in common though. Like the rest of us natural-born bikers, he had got wet and cold riding them, pushed the bloody things miles when they broke down on him, sworn at them, thrown spanners at them, and yes, the one we all love to hate, been stopped, searched & sometimes even arrested, just for riding them.

As it turned out, all was not in vain because in the early Seventies (pre-1976 amalgamation into Kent as one club) he proudly joined Hells Angels M.C. England of which he would become a member for over 25 years. These lifetime experiences would prove invaluable and helped him gain is Philosophy Doctorate and Sociology Degree. These were awarded to him after a seven year course at Warwick University. Hells Angels Kent allowed him ‘time off’ in support of him achieving these important goals. With such experience, insight, intelligence and now recognised qualifications on paper, it was hardly surprising that he was the favourite man for the job of press officer for the ‘Bulldog Bash’ and, just as importantly, official press officer for Hells Angels England for over 12 years.

Maz had an influential part to play in many important new ventures such as the birth of the Bulldog Bash and the early stages of Motorcycle Action Group (M.A.G.). He has also written two books ‘Sturgis 50th Anniversary’ and ‘Bikers – Birth of a Modern Day Outlaw’. Dr. Ian ‘Maz’ Harris PhD has become one of the most important figures in biking history. A position which he would have modestly denied liking, but deep down we all knew he loved the attention really! This is a very small insight into the world of Maz Harris, but if you were lucky enough to read any of his work in the biking press, such as ‘Heavy Duty’, ‘Super Twins’, Back Street Heroes’, ‘Hog Mag’, ‘Custom Bike’ and ‘Freeway’, then you would have appreciated his wit, contempt of the ignorant and yet the air of compassion about him that so many of us loved, despite the fact that in the later years he suffered from M.E.

For those of us who knew him personally, the loss was immeasurable, not least to his family including Sister Jane and his Hells Angels Brothers all over the world. 31st May 2000 is a date that will not be soon forgotten as it was the date a man’s life was taken, a man who had done so much but who still, as always, had loads left to do. He was a man whose work has touched all of us, in one way or another, and some of you won’t even be aware of it. Long after his passing we still have reports of the selfless things that he had done, some acquaintances and lots were strangers who had written and asked for his help or advice. He thought of all these people as a brother or sister bikers. His unsung work had touched their very sole. To quote The President of HAMC, Kent, Herman: “We can never say goodbye, just see you later.” Written by Zoe with contributions by those of us who knew him best.